Like a Sheep on the Side of a Hill

It must be a different life
to take the boy
to a store where bolts
on the wall flutter
as the bell precedes
"Can I help you" —

At the point of sale
to answer
"How's it going"
with a sound like
a sheep at the onset of rain…

Mezuzot by the elevator,
throb and whipcrack
in the fluorescent bulb,

the jacket song
of "quiet there…"

Hey excited feeling,
take off your shoes
and play with me a while.

The little list
packing its brief
interruptions into a soft
someone studying
up against you…

Soda can with gerber daisies,
take your process to the Alps.

Mint is on the baby's mind
looking up at lamby clouds
through dried-tear eyes.

Launch the more or less
into the side of the sun.

The please freak
sees through the explosion
of "nice pinata disguise!"

O insight you make me
loot for walking.

Briefcase on my lap,
are you my long lost desk?

The pen goes
where it feels
books pave the easement,

I go where I feel
something soft ignoring
admiring
the percussion of bone,
all the unyielding languages
play with

standing in the crowd
and waiting for the morning.

Smoke of the wedding
thirty miles off—

hurrying
along sodium shadows
up broken sidewalk
the soft smell
of beer flowers
alarms away.

The speed and halt
of the bow
prop up
the pow—

If you meet the Buddha
on the road, ask him why
I get the newspaper,

mosquito bites on my knuckles
and the soles of my feet—




All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of the author.